Win-7 32bit & 64bit for RAM Problem

[mwvirk]

Hello friends,

I want to ask about 32bit 64bit windows-7

I have c2q Q6600 on asus p5q and I’m using creative audigy sound card and xfx 8800gt and RAM is 4GB

Above hardware is running with windows-7 32bit and problem is that I can use only 3GB of my 4GB RAM

So I am planning to install 64bit windows-7 and later (when officially win-7 release) I will buy 64bit win-7 so that I can use full 4GB RAM

but I want to know about my system and sound card + display card -- are these card with work on win-7 64bit without any problem

2nd thing is about software running on my 32bit OS e.g. acdsee divx and other normal gaming + multimedia tools - is there any problem running these tools/app on win-7 64bit

Please help me since it will be my first time that I am going to use/install any 64bit OS

Thanks and sure I will get full support as usual

 

[Rob Williams]

Welcome to the forums mwvirk!

Because of limitations with a 32-bit architecture, only 4GB total can be used across the entire system, which would include a combination of the system and graphics card memory. The 64-bit architecture removes that limit almost entirely. If your PC supported it, you could essentially run 17,200,000GB ;-)

For the first question, no, you won't have any trouble with either of those. For the Creative audio card, you'll want to take a look at their support page here:

http://support.creative.com/kb/showarticle.aspx?sid=61105

As for the other applications, I cannot see an issue occurring at all. In all the time I've been using 64-bit machines, I've had a single application not function, and it wasn't even an important one. I've used ACDSee, DivX on 64-bit Vista, and I don't see anything changing with Windows 7. You can feel confident in that... because these companies are huge, and the products are still being supported. No company like these are going to ignore Windows 7 adoption.

You'll do just fine with the upgrade to 64-bit, I'm sure of it

 

[mwvirk]

ok.. thnx for everybody for all ur help.
i am going to try win-7 x64bit
thnx

 

[b1lk1]

I personally did not like Win 7 but you are not gonna regret going 64-bit. While the industry has been soooo slow to adopt it properly, there is pretty much no modern hardware/software that will not run under a 64-bit OS.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Welcome to the forums mwvirk!

Because of limitations with a 32-bit architecture, only 4GB total can be used across the entire system, which would include a combination of the system and graphics card memory. The 64-bit architecture removes that limit almost entirely. If your PC supported it, you could essentially run 17,200,000GB ;-)

Actually, I was a little surprised when the 64 bit stuff started coming out. I fully expected a "Mode Bit" or some other means of separating the two CPU modes... but that's not what happened. What your basic AMD64 chip (and AM64 instruction set) actually does is execute 32bit instructions in it's 64 bit registers. This means there is nothing whatsoever preventing the intermingling of 32 and 64 bit code... not only on the same machine, but actually in the same programs or drivers! The CPU simply doesn't care about that stuff...

Interestingly this means there is no speed hit --as so often claimed-- for running 32 bit code in a 64 bit machine. It's all the same to the hardware and thus no penalty is incurred.

Where the limitations come from is Windows ... 32 bit versions of Windows are compiled with 32bit variables (pointers, addresses, etc) and thus will overflow above the 4gig mark. This ends up forcing the Windows image and code to exist only in the lower 4gigs of address space and, since the high bit (bit 31) is reserved for rom, hardware and IO ports, you end up with a 2 gigs limit on ram in Windows.

This by the way is also where the 4gig filesize limit comes from on FAT32 partitions... 32 bit variables in the directory structure.

Believe me it has nothing to do with the hardware... it's all about the size of those address registers. I've taken my older 32 bit programs and recompiled them with the 64 bit verison of my language and they worked just fine on 64 bit mahcines --- without any alterations at all... even on 32bit operating systems in 64 bit machines.

Yes, I just told you that so long as I compile a Windows PE program and don't try to call any 64bit-only OS functions... I can run a 64 bit program on 32 bit windows and I can use 64 bit variables without any problems at all.

Of course we all know we can run 32 bit stuff on 64 bit systems... we do that all the time.

The limitations imposed are from Windows (and older OSs in general).

I've attached an example... This is a file system scanner, it's a PE image (i.e. 32 bit format program) that will run on either 32 or 64 bit machines, but it uses 64 bit variables allowing it to scan files and file systems that go way beyond terrabyte sizes...

 

[Rob Williams]

Believe me it has nothing to do with the hardware...

No one said it was a hardware limitation... though it would be if we were using a 32-bit processor and trying to run a 64-bit operating system.

Yes, I just told you that so long as I compile a Windows PE program and don't try to call any 64bit-only OS functions...

Is the purpose of that only to have the application require a single binary file, or is there something else I'm missing?

 

[2Tired2Tango]

No one said it was a hardware limitation... though it would be if we were using a 32-bit processor and trying to run a 64-bit operating system.

I never said you said it was a hardware limitation... but most people (around here anyway) do seem to think it is. They treat 32 and 64 bit systems like they come from 2 separate planets.

Is the purpose of that only to have the application require a single binary file, or is there something else I'm missing?

The thing is that 32 and 64 bit compilers create different program images (the format of the program as stored on disk)... but the division is arbitrary, PE and PE+ decided upon by Microsoft to prevent running 64 bit software on 32 bit versions of the OS... Think of the marketing hit if 64 bit code started showing up on 32 bit systems...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Executable

 

[b1lk1]

I never said you said it was a hardware limitation... but most people (around here anyway) do seem to think it is. They treat 32 and 64 bit systems like they come from 2 separate planets.

Funny, I never seemed to notice that this was a fact (around here anyway).

The only time it seems to be even brought up as of late is when people are deciding as to which OS to run and for the amount of system ram. Now that ram is cheap, people are buying up 4GB+ and need a 64-bit OS to use it all.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Funny, I never seemed to notice that this was a fact (around here anyway).

The only time it seems to be even brought up as of late is when people are deciding as to which OS to run and for the amount of system ram. Now that ram is cheap, people are buying up 4GB+ and need a 64-bit OS to use it all.

True enough... What I was speaking about was the arbitrary decision to block 64bit programs from running on 32bit operating systems.

 

[mwvirk]

thnx for all ur help.
i have downloaded x64bit win-7 from microsoft and will be installing it today
thnx